Teresa Nesci - Petrarch & Songs for the Lute - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Nicola Porpora was a composer who helped to turn Italian opera into the most successful and spectacular genre in Europe. One of the few luminaries of the 'Neapolitan School' to actually be born in Naples, Porpora wrote L'Angelica, a serenade for six voices and instruments, to a libretto by the young Pietro Metastasio in 1720. The work was composed for the birthday of Empress Elizabeth Christine, wife of Charles VI, and it's plot is comedic, focusing on the travails of a couple in love. The opera's success was immediate, resulting in the commissioning of further works that would lead to ever more glamorous successes for Porpora in Venice, London, Dresden and Vienna.

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Digitally remastered edition of Metallica's 1983 debut album. Kill 'Em All is regarded as a groundbreaking album for thrash metal because of its precise musicianship, which fuses New Wave of British Heavy Metal riffs with hardcore punk tempos. Its musical approach and lyrics were markedly different from rock's mainstream of the early ‘80s and inspired a number of bands who followed in similar manner. Metallica is easily one of the best, most influential heavy metal band of the '80s. Responsible for bringing the genre back to Earth, the bandmates looked and talked like they were from the street, shunning the usual rockstar games of metal musicians during the early '80s. They expanded the limits of thrash, using speed and volume not for their own sake, but to enhance their intricately structured compositions.

Building on the success of Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni's commedia lirica L'amico Fritz was given seven encores and thirty-five curtain calls at it's premiere in Rome in 1891. Considered by critics to be one of Mascagni's best operas, the story is that of a love triangle involving the wealthy Fritz Kobus and Suzel, daughter of one of his tenants, who together sing the famous 'Cherry Duet' in Act II. Returning to the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence for the first time since 1941, this production was acclaimed for it's superb cast and astonishingly effective modern setting.